Folkmusik till Skansen och Mazurkor till Harg : Folk music to Skansen and Mazurkas to Harg

Just before the turn of the last century, the young and promising Swedish music ethnologist Karl Peter Leffler published Om Nyckelharpospelet på Skansen. In the writing, two detailed portraits are drawn of the fiddlers Johan Edlund and Jonas Skoglund, both of whom had been summoned from Uppland to contribute with folk music to the capital’s national project in Stockholm. The booklet has worked as the basis for several studies about the nyckelharpa, and folk music in general. The institution Skansen, is emerging as part of the Nordiska Museet under Artur Hazelius’ care. Here, the Nordic and the Swedish are being established during this national romantic era by bringing folk culture from all areas of the kingdom – to be displayed and brought to life at the capital’s outdoor museum. The current research project focuses on the constitution of the Swedish when it comes to folk music. Skansen has become significant for our knowledge of and how we understand Swedish culture. What kind of music was to become a part of the Swedish? One way to investigate this is to focus on a single fiddler – which in my case is one of the two fiddlers that Leffler highlights – Johan Edlund from the Roslagen parish of Harg in Uppland. The project, which is ongoing, tries to map the musical cultural geography of the 19th century and the Roslagen’s parish of Harg with the help of genealogical research using records of parish catechetical meetings, old maps, old national surveys from Nordiska Museet, photos, newspapers, and private correspondences. What was the musical life like for those who lived at this place at this time? What occasions, venues and contexts were music present in people’s lives? Where did the music stem from? How did they learn how to play and where did the instruments come from? The emerging picture around this fiddler, his playing and learning, shows, among other things, that it is not only Roslagen that brings music to the capital – musical influences also travel in the o